சுகாதார கல்வி ஆராய்ச்சி மற்றும் மேம்பாட்டு இதழ்

The health burden of poor water quality is enormous. It is estimated that around 37.7 million individuals are affected by water-borne diseases; annually 1.5 million children are estimated to die from diarrheal-related diseases each year. The developing countries in the world still face the problem of water scarcity with Africa having the largest number of countries with problems. Due to water scarcity, many families tend to store water in their home for long term use. Most families have inadequate knowledge or are ignorant on the duration of the storage and the type of container or vessel used in the collection and storage of drinkable water.

The general objective of the study was to assess the knowledge and practices of the inhabitants of Santa Health District in the collection and preservation of potable water in order to avert the occurrence of water-borne diseases.

The specific objectives of the study were:

• To assess the knowledge of the inhabitants of Santa Health District on the collection, treatment and preservation of potable water.

• To determine the practical measures employed in the collection, treatment and preservation of potable water.

• To identify the problems faced in the collection, treatment and preservation of potable water.

• To ascertain the information they need from health personnel to complement the practice of the collection and preservation of potable water.

A descriptive cross sectional study design was employed for the study where-in primary data was collected at one point in time from inhabitants of the Santa Health District in order to collect their responses on the protection and preservation of portable water. The instrument employed for primary data collection was a structured questionnair with open and close-ended questions, administered by the researcher and co-researchers to the study population in the randomly selected quarters using cluster sampling. A sample size of 110 households was recruited for the study. Results show that concerning respondents’ knowledge of drinking water, 68 (58.18%) defined drinkable water as water safe enough to be consumed with low risk of harm, 24 (21.8%) defined it as water which originates from pipe borne water while 16 (14.5%) said that it is water from any natural source. On criteria used in the identification of unsafe water, 68 (58.18%) said they identified water which is not safe for drinking from its color, taste and odor, 32 (29.1%) said only the color of water while 6 (4%) said from its taste and odor and 3 (2.7%) said from the odor of water. On their sources of potable water when there is shortage of water supply, 58 (52.72%) said they got water from springs, 22 (20%) got their water from wells while 8 (16%) got theirs from streams and 6 (5.4%) said they got water from different taps around the municipality. On the issue of water protection and preservation from contaminants, 58 (52.7%) of the responses were that they lacked containers for their drinking water, 32 (29.5%) said they lacked chemicals and filters to treat their water, while 14 (12.9%) did not have knowledge in the protection and preservation of potable water while 06 (5.5%) said that the problem they encountered was the presence of children playing around drinkable water sources and water storage containers. From this study, it was found out that: respondents were not well educated on the protection and preservation of potable water; 72% of respondents did not treat water collected from streams or springs which is the main reason for the essence of public health education for the prevention against water borne diseases; 64.2% of the respondents stored their potable water as long as possible well above the stipulated duration for the preservation of drinking water. From the data collected, and analysis made it be can be concluded that there exist inadequate knowledge on the protection and preservation of potable water. Their understanding of the notions of hygiene and sanitation, the knowledge and practices on the collection and preservation of potable water are not based on the level of education but on how much public health information they got about drinking water collection, treatment and preservation. So, an up-to-date, knowledge and practices on the collection, treatment and preservation of potable water is necessary for the wellbeing of the Santa community. The Council’s hygiene and sanitation service should take it as duty function to organize regular public health education lectures in social institutions in order to enlighten the community.

For the purpose for exploring the differences in implicit preferences in facial expression recognition between urban internet-addicted left-behind children and urban left-behind children with no such addiction, variant GO/NO-GO (GNAT) paradigm of implicit association test (IAT) and a single-factor 2 level experimental design were adopted to test sixty participants (14 years of age) who were selected from two junior middle schools in Chongqing, China. This study results showed that compared with urban non-addicted left-behind children, urban Internet-addicted left-behind children gave more preference to negative emotion and poorer evaluation on their egos.

Poultry is a rampantly expanding agro-industry in Bangladesh like other developing countries. Several studies have detected multidrug resistance (MDR) Proteus mirabilis from poultry meat globally; however, no similar data was available for poultry samples in Bangladesh. P. mirabilis is a zoonotic human pathogen of urinary tract infection (UTI), nosocomial infection and wound infection, therefore, a potential threat to public health. We isolated P. mirabilis from chicken droppings collected from local commercial poultry farms and examined their antimicrobials susceptibilities. Chicken droppings were streak-cultured onto xylose lysine deoxycholate agar plates after enriching in buffered peptone water. Selective colonies were identified by biochemical test and API20E kits. Antimicrobial susceptibilities were tested by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method. Total 36 P. mirabilis were isolated from 39% (27 of 70) chicken droppings. Tetracycline evidenced as the highest individually-resistant (94%, 34/36) antibiotic (AB) while ciprofloxacin was the lowest (17%, 6/36). Hazard lies when 83% P. mirabilis were proved to be MDR (30/36), being resistant to three or more
AB. Findings provide a baseline data on MDR P. mirabilis circulating around these PFs, it would assist the veterinarian in rational treatment and biosafety planning. More detail studies will be required to clarify their antimicrobial resistance and clinical relevance.

Genetic Modification (GM) is a rapidly growing technology that can improve productivity and profitability for producers. The study assessed consumer acceptance of GM foods in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The study is based on a survey conducted in three districts of the Greater Accra Region namely, Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Ga East (GE) and Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) using purposive sampling method. A qualitative choice (Logit) model was used to estimate the effect of various factors on consumer acceptance of GM foods. The results obtained showed that, about 90% of the respondents had heard or read something about GM foods indicating a high level awareness among respondents’ in the Greater Accra Region. The results also show that 85% of the respondents were willing to accept GM foods. From the logit model, consumers with age groups 31-40 and above 50 years, were more likely to accept
GM foods in the study area where as male respondents were less likely to accept GMFs. In addition, respondents with secondary and tertiary levels of education were likely to accept GM foods. Household size 1 to 5, reading product labels as well as understanding of science and technology were also significant variables in explaining consumer acceptance of GM foods in the Greater Accra Region. Obviously awareness and education was shown to be a necessary condition for acceptability of GM foods. The recommendation of this study is to promote effective education about the benefits of GM foods to increase the potential for acceptance.

Aims: To evaluate the relationship of anthropometric measures with insulin resistance (IR) in 1162 Indian adolescents from the follow-up survey of the Hyderabad Nutrition trial.
Methods: Analysis was done on data collected from 1162 adolescent participants of the Hyderabad Nutrition trial follow up survey. Participation included an interview, physical examinations and blood draws. Associations of body mass index (BMI), fat mass index (FMI), fat free mass index (FFMI), central to peripheral skinfold ratio (CPR), percent of body fat, waist circumference (WC) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) with IR were studied using linear regression models accounting for village clustering and adjusting for age and pubertal stage. Anthropometric indices were calculated from height, weight, skinfold thickness, waist and hip circumferences and IR was calculated by the homoeostasis model assessment (HOMA).
Results: We observed strong associations of BMI, FMI and FFMI with HOMA. Interestingly, FFMI (β (95% confidence interval) -0.03 (0.01, 0.06); P=0.007 (girls) and 0.06 (0.03, 0.09); P<0.0001 (boys)) was as strongly associated with IR as BMI (0.03 (0.01, 0.06); P=0.006 (girls) and 0.06 (0.03, 0.09); P<0.0001(boys)) and FMI (0.03 (0.01, 0.05); P=0.02 (girls) and 0.05 (0.02, 0.07); P=0.001 (boys)) We explored the relationship of lean mass with IR relative to fat mass and the associations remained strong.
Conclusions: We conclude that lean mass is as strongly associated with IR as fat mass in rural Indian adolescents. These findings appear contrary to the belief that higher rates of IR in South Asians reflect greater central adiposity. Future research needs to increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms that lead to these associations in both obese and lean populations.

Length of stay (LOS) in acute psychiatric hospitals has been heightened in recent years with the current economic climate and a growing realization that health care costs need to be contained. This study was designed to identify predictors of LOS which are available at the time of admission. Charts of 391 admissions to an acute psychiatric hospital were reviewed on the basis of a pre-constructed checklist. Regression modeling with the natural logarithm of LOS as the dependent variable was used to identify a multivariate model for LOS. Age, marital status, involuntary admission and diagnosis of an affective disorder or a psychotic disorder were shown to be independent variables that predicted length of stay. These variables in a multivariate model accounted for approximately 19% of the variance in LOS.